Posts Tagged ‘job’

Wednesday’s Hero

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Spc. Jonnie L. StilesSpc. Jonnie L Stiles
38 years old from Highlands Ranch, Colorado
769th Engineer Battalion, Louisiana Army National Guard
November 13, 2008
U.S. Army

Louisiana National Guard spokesman Maj. Michael Kazmierzak said Spc. Jonnie L. Stiles had been serving as a gunner on a Humvee doing route clearance when and IED detonated near his vehicle in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. He said the job typically involves checking roads for bombs and insurgents.

Stiles’ wife, Launa, said that he was nearly killed last month when a suicide bomber blew up a military vehicle in front of his. She said he was still able to rescue three other soldiers and returned to duty before his 30-day recovery period was finished.

“He was strong and really cared for his men,” she said.

Stiles was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and graduated from Littleton High School in Colorado. He served in the military for 17 years, first joining the Marines and then switching to the Army in 1999. He served three years at Fort Carson, left the Army and then returned as a member of the Colorado Air National Guard in the Summer of 2007.

All Information Was Found On And Copied From MilitaryCity.com

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

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About that mailbox . . .

Saturday, December 6th, 2008

I’ve never been a big fan of my mailbox.  However, it served its purpose till last night.  We woke up this morning to our mailbox laying on the ground.  Since a lot of my product reviews are sent by the mail, this is a very bad, bad thing.  Second problem, it snowed here last night, so the ground is frozen.  We think it was hit by the snow plow in the middle of the night (it was still there at 11 pm).  The beam that actually holds the mailbox is split.  We had to do a horrible fix job in about 20 degree weather today.  Bill took some industrial clamps and zip ties and that is the only thing that is holding the beam together.  The beam also leans forward pretty bad, so we had to take stakes and pound them into the ground around the base.  This looks like the worst white trash mailbox I’ve ever seen, and there is no way to fix this until the ground thaws out.  I am hoping to get some pictures of my sorry looking mailbox tomorrow.  If anyone has any ideas of how to get new a mailbox into the frozen ground, I am all ears.

The Audiologist

Monday, November 10th, 2008

As I said in my last post, Madison failed the preschool hearing test.  I never there was a chance of that, and I found myself a lot more upset about it than I thought it would be.  I ended up Twittering about it, and a lot of the awesome people on there made me feel a lot better about it.

We lucked out and were able to get her in today to get her hearing tested.  I was a little nervous, but she had a blast doing it.  They did several cool things.  First, they tested to see if she had fluid in her ears.  They put a thing in her ear, and we watched a screen.  If it looked like a pancake when the tone sounded, she had fluid in her ears.  If it looked like a mountain, she didn’t.  We saw two mountains (one for each ear).  Then they did a test to check her middle ear, and she passed that.  Lastly, they tested her manually.  They put in earplug looking things in her ears, and the audiologist went into a different room and talked to Madison over it.  She said words like carports, baseball, and ice cream, and Madison had to repeat the word.  The audiologist told her she did a good job to which she replied that “she practices a lot”.  I am not sure what she practices, but it was pretty funny.  After she repeated the words, they then did a test with tones.  If she heard the tone, she had to clap.  They then did the word test again.  Then they did a last test with some earphone looking thing.  When she heard the beep, she had to say Beep.

The good news is that she passed!  On a scale of 0 – 20 being normal, she scored 5s on most things.  She did get 15 on 800 mhz stuff (it could be 8,000 I don’t remember).  That is still in the normal range, but I could hear when she was missing words, so it is something I will keep an eye on.  Their recommendation was just to keep an eye on it, but she was completely normal.  Woohooo!!!!

Showertime

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

I have looked at more showers in the last year than I ever have wanted to.  We remodeled my upstairs bathroom and added a new shower last summer.  We also added a new tub and had to tear down all the tile that was there before (good times, let me tell you).  This summer we added a new bathroom to the basement downstairs.  I don’t miss living in a construction zone.  However, it is very nice to have two full bathrooms now.  However, both of my bathrooms spaces are small, so I could not go all out like I wanted to.

In the basement, we had very little space to work with due to the configuration of my basement.  We ended up putting up a shower enclosure (However, I had no idea that you could get a shower enclosures online.  If I would have known that, I would not have let my husband pick it out.  Somebody had to stay home with the kids, so I let him pick it out by himself.  He did do a good job, but I probably would have picked something different.)  However, if you only have a small space and want to add a full bath, I definitely recommend shower enclosures.  They offer a lot more room than they look, and it is nice having two showers when you are trying to get ready for parties and such.

Eventually, when we add on to upstairs, I am going to check out the shower store and look into getting discount steam shower.  We are going to add in a hot tub up there, so we need the shower to be seperate.  What would be better than a steam shower?  They look awesome and extremely relaxing.  If you are lacking on space, they even offer steam showers with minitubs attached!

I personally can’t wait to remodel again, so we can spruce up our house.  Even the economy is in the tank, houses still are a good value.  Even though houses prices have dropped for the time being, they will bounce back.  Remodeling also makes it more enjoyable for you to stay in the house you are in.  By building out our basement, we can definitely stay in this house a lot longer (my upstairs only has 980 square feet, so we were a little cramped up here).

What does your bathroom look like?  What kind of upgrades would you like to make?

Where is the accountability?

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

You know, I seriously hate being negative on here.  I really do.  However, some thing just tick me off to no end, so you all have to hear about them.  :)

If you are a regular reader here, you know about my struggle with the public school and that we are considering sending her to private school.  Click here to read all about it.

Now, my taxes pay their salaries and getting someone to talk to me is like pulling teeth.  Then they don’t really answer what I ask either.  However, my favorite has to be the Chicago Tribune article I read this week that the schools districts are telling parents to ignore the state test scores since they were graded differently this year.  However, at the state level, they are saying the grading is comparable to years past.  So who is right?  Who needs to recheck their job descriptions and find out that they have no right to tell the parents anything?

Seriously, where is the accountability?  I hear over and over that public schools are better since they are accountable.  Really?  They won’t talk to parents, they lie about test scores, etc. Where is the accountability?

Here is what I have learned from the private school.  They are very transparent.  They don’t baby any parents.  The principal even said at the open house that if 90% of the parents can do it right, they all should be able to and that they don’t put up with that crap.  Every time I have called and talked to them, they have answered every single one of my questions.  They told me the class size this year for every single grade (K-8).  The people answering the phone were extremely knowledgeable.  There has only been one question they didn’t know the answer to and she gave me the number of the person who would (and that person did!).  I can come in anytime and tour the school, and their test scores are an open book that can also be looked at any time I want.  Granted, I have to pay to get this type of service but don’t I pay the public schools too?

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